STAUFF.

Speak not of vengeance.  We are here, to meet
The threatened evil, not to avenge the past. 
Now tell me what you’ve done, and what secured,
To aid the common cause in Unterwald. 
How stand the peasantry disposed, and how
Yourself escaped the wiles of treachery?

MELCH.

Through the Surenen’s fearful mountain chain,
Where dreary ice-fields stretch on every side,
And sound is none save the hoarse vulture’s cry,
I reach’d the Alpine pasture, where the herds
From Uri and from Engelberg resort,
And turn their cattle forth to graze in common. 
Still as I went along, I slaked my thirst
With the coarse oozings of the glacier heights
That thro’ the crevices come foaming down,
And turned to rest me in the herdsmen’s cots,[51]
Where I was host and guest, until I gain’d
The cheerful homes and social haunts of men. 
Already through these distant vales had spread
The rumor of this last atrocity;
And wheresoe’er I went, at every door,
Kind words saluted me and gentle looks. 
I found these simple spirits all in arms
Against our rulers’ tyrannous encroachments. 
For as their Alps through each succeeding year
Yield the same roots—­their streams flow ever on
In the same channels—­nay, the clouds and winds
The selfsame course unalterably pursue,
So have old customs there, from sire to son,
Been handed down, unchanging and unchanged;
Nor will they brook to swerve or turn aside
From the fixed even tenor of their life. 
With grasp of their hard hands they welcomed me—­
Took from the walls their rusty falchions down—­
And from their eyes the soul of valor flash’d
With joyful lustre, as I spoke those names,
Sacred to every peasant in the mountains,
Your own and Walter Fuerst’s.  Whate’er your voice
Should dictate as the right, they swore to do;
And you they swore to follow e’en to death. 
—­So sped I on from house to house, secure
In the guest’s sacred privilege;—­and when
I reached at last the valley of my home,
Where dwell my kinsmen, scatter’d far and near—­
And when I found my father, stript and blind,
Upon the stranger’s straw, fed by the alms
Of charity—­

STAUFFACHER.

Great heavens!

MELCHTHAL.

Yet wept I not! 
No—­not in weak and unavailing tears
Spent I the force of my fierce burning anguish;
Deep in my bosom, like some precious treasure,
I lock’d it fast, and thought on deeds alone. 
Through every winding of the hills I crept—­
No valley so remote but I explored it;
Nay, at the very glacier’s ice-clad base,
I sought and found the homes of living men;
And still, where’er my wandering footsteps turn’d,
The selfsame hatred of these tyrants met me. 
For even there, at vegetation’s verge,
Where the numb’d earth is barren of all fruits,
Their grasping hands had been for plunder thrust. 
Into the hearts of all this honest race
The story of my wrongs struck deep, and now
They, to a man, are ours; both heart and hand.